Shore Batteries from Stone Mountain Miniatures

Since I'm working on expanding things like my islands and shore batteries, I have been buying 1/1200 shore batteries from several different manufacturers.  The nice two-gun earth battery I got from Thoroughbred is in the ACW post, so I won't picture it again here.  Instead, I want to show off some more shore fortifications from a couple of other companies.

The first up are some shore batteries and large guns from Stone Mountain Miniatures.  While their ironclads are 1/1000 scale, I don't think that will make much of a difference where the shore forts are concerned.  So, I ordered the following items from them:
HSS 120: Dirt Shoreline Forts,
HSS 121: Dirt Fort Redoubts, and
HSS 115: Fortification Guns with Crew.

The forts are cast in a nice white/cream colored resin.  They have some nice detailing, as you can see in the photos.  I particularly like the steps leading into the batteries, as that is missing from the Thoroughbred one.  If I have to nitpick them, I would say that the info sheet included with them mentions wooden platforms for the guns, but there's no evidence of them on the casting.  As earthen batteries, they should fit into both the Age of Sail and Ironclad eras equally well.  I don't know if the one gun position will be of much use with my Age of Sail ships, but the other two should do sterling duty with them.

These are straight from the bag, no cleanup.

As always, these photos are larger than life size, and make the castings look worse than they really are. If the camera adds 10 pounds to a person, it certainly magnifies every bubble in a resin casting.  Remember too, that I did not clean these up before I took the photos.

Next up is HSS 121, the Dirt Fort Redoubts.  They also come three to a package, but as they are all identical I'm just showing pictures of one.  They're made from the same resin as the forts, with about the same level of details.  There is a nice extra with these, though, and that is a set of guns and gunners.

Once again, these are straight from the bag.

Now, the photos make these guns and gunners look REALLY bad.  That's because of how small these castings are.

Recolor this, and you could call it a new "Face on Mars"

So, how small are they?  Well, here's a picture of a gun casting and the Quarter of Comparison™

Looks a LOT better in comparison. And still a lot larger than life sized.

The last thing in this review is HHS 115: Fortification Guns and Crew.  This is a bag of heavy guns, but they are not generic.  Below is the sheet that comes in the bag:

Three distinctly different types of guns?  That's a pretty big claim, so let's see what they look like:

L to R: Columbiad, Rodman, Parrott.

I thought about putting a closeup of each gun, but having done that earlier in this post, I don't really think it's fair to the castings.  You can see from the picture above that each of the guns is different, and the Parrott even has the band around the breech.  Just in case the Quarter of Comparison™  above didn't tell you enough, below is one of the castings on my thumbnail:

All in all, I think they are a pretty useful addition, and I would recommend them for players of sailing ships and/or ironclads.  You can find them at: http://www.wargamingminiatures.com/wargaming-figures/houstons-ships-fortifications/ .  And in interest of full disclosure, I bought these myself and Stone Mountain Miniatures did not know I was going to write about them.